


Lessons Learned

by shadesfalcon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BDSM, Dom Clint Barton, F/M, Flogging, Punishment, Sub Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 21:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10289963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesfalcon/pseuds/shadesfalcon
Summary: He gently removes his thumb from Natasha’s mouth – she’s running her tongue over it from where it invades between her teeth – and trails his hand down her neck, over her collarbone, down over one breast. He reaches up with his other hand and twists it in her hair. It’s a firm grip. One with intent.She feels it. She keeps her eyes closed and her arms at her sides, but her body shifts imperceptibly. Like an anxious universe, she shivers in a way that cannot be described but is nevertheless felt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for a [tumblr prompt](http://polyamoryavengers.tumblr.com/post/158379586426/hey-could-you-write-a-domclint-subnat-thing)

 

“Close your eyes, pretty girl,” Clint says, brushing his thumb over her cheek. She does so immediately, although she belies the gentle obedience by cheekily catching his thumb between her teeth when it gets down to the corner of her mouth.

He doesn’t mind. They’ve always been about fluidity. Solid rules and protocols would never work for them. They play too many people. Float away on too many identities. They need a varied script to bring them back to the earth.

Natasha is on her knees in front of him, and they have both already stripped down to their skin. Today’s identities were rich and spoiled petty people, and that mentality had been shed along with the fancy suit and the green silk dress.

Well, almost shed. Clint has something in the back of his mind that has been building for a while. A problem he’s been unable to pinpoint or articulate until events today had made it clear. So now, he’s looking to make a point.

He gently removes his thumb from Natasha’s mouth – she’s running her tongue over it from where it invades between her teeth – and trails his hand down her neck, over her collarbone, down over one breast. He rubs his thumb over her nipple the way he just had against her cheek. She responds by reaching out with one hand to trail her own fingers over the skin of his hip. He can feel his blood rushing and she smiles at him softly, and if he doesn’t change the play soon then it will spiral out of his control.

He changes his touch on her breast, getting a handful and tightening to squeeze painfully, and she drops her arm back to her side. He reaches up with his other hand and twists it in her hair. It’s a firm grip. One with intent.

She feels it. She keeps her eyes closed and her arms at her sides, but her body shifts imperceptibly. Like an anxious universe, she shivers in a way that cannot be described but is nevertheless felt.

“Do you know what you did wrong?” he asks. Again, with intent. This is different than playful punishment. There’s something here he needs to get at, and she deserves the warning. There are few ways to more quickly set a scene sour than to come at it from wildly different expectations.

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t know.”

Clint knows it’s the truth, but that’s all right. He’ll explain it to her, and she knows it.

“Bow your head,” he orders, and she does so quickly. Her curled red hair falls over her bare shoulders, and he brushes it off her back so it hangs down around her face.

He rubs his hands up and down her back, slowly. Testing the muscles and reminding her of his presence. He kisses the points of her shoulder blades – outlines their triangularity. He runs his hands down the curves of her sides and grabs handfuls of her hips, squeezing tightly. He uses that grip to pull her down to sit on her heels, rather than to kneel up as she had been.

Then he stands, looking down at her back. There’s a faint pink tinge on her skin in a curved half circle. Her dress had been open-backed, and they’d been out in the sun a long time. It doesn’t preoccupy him. Left alone, it will fade in a day or less, but he intends to re-write it in a deeper darker red.

He leaves her there for a moment, to go and fetch what he needs, but he makes a point to move noisily so she can track his location, even with closed eyes. When he returns he runs his fingers down her neck, tracing her spine. Sliding two fingers all the way down to the small of her back. He stops there, and taps twice.

“Wrists,” he orders, and she complies, folding her arms behind her to cross her wrists where Clint has indicated. Clint wraps them in soft leather cuffs and cinches them as tight as he safely can. He slips the blindfold over her eyes, more a reminder than an act of force. It will keep her from having to hold them closed on her own. Then he steps back and stands up to place a metal dowel rod along the line of her shoulders.

He feels her considering. Trying to guess the purpose of the rod balanced against the back of her neck. It forces her to keep her head uncomfortably low. Otherwise her neck will angle too far and it will roll off, down her back or off one shoulder or the other. For now, though, she’s still, and it sits in its place.

“That is to stay balanced where it is,” he says. “Don’t let it fall.”

He doubts very much she will be able to pull it off. He does not intend to be nice, and he needs it to a fall a few times anyway, if he’s going to make this point.

“I have a lesson for you,” Clint says, and only her fingers move. Flex and extend. It’s her way of telling him she’s nervous. They haven’t done a lesson in a long time. In ages. Since back when she first began submitting to him, and they had so much deficit between them. So much to teach each other.

Learning is painful, and Clint reminds her of this fact with a vicious strike of the short quirt in his hand. It whips through the air and paints a thin line of reddened skin. The impact is not enough to move her body, but the slightest flinch will send the rod to the floor, so she’ll have to curb her reactions completely.

“You’re going to have to focus,” he says. “Focus on your task.”

“I am,” she says firmly, and Clint grins in amusement, and whips her again. Another red mark joins the first. Like someone has taken a marker and drawn across her naked back. He’s not drawing blood, not yet, but he knows he’s hurting her. He knows exactly what this particular instrument feels like.

He whips her again, and then again. Slowly. Pausing in between the strikes. Letting the stinging pain rise and fall and throb. There are welts rising in tram-track lines on either side of the red lines. He pauses, and runs his fingers over a pair of them. Gently, so he can feel the difference in the texture. Then he draws back, and strikes her again.

“Are you going to tell me what this is for?” she asks, and her voice is tinted with exasperation.

The fact that she can still be annoyed at him while willingly bent down, taking pain at his whim, is a source of constant amusement for Clint. He loves it. The way her inflexibility shines out of her flexibility. He rewards the sharp spark of dichotomous personality with a particularly vicious strike directly over an older one, and she shifts. Not even a flinch, just a shift in her weight to better accommodate the way the pain comes.

The metal rod rolls slightly, and Natasha tries to duck her head further in order to avoid the pull of gravity, but it’s too late and the rod slides around to one side, slips over her shoulder, and hits the floor with a dull clang.

Clint tsks in mock disapproval.

“I’ve got its weight now,” she says down to the floor. “It won’t happen again.” She moves her knees further apart, giving herself a more solid foundation. Shifts her shoulders around to make a place for the rod to be returned. Straightens her spine so there’s more leeway in her neck for her to accommodate the cylindrical metal.

“We’ll see,” Clint says, eyeing the space between her now parted thighs. “For now, you owe me recompense for failing the task.”

Natasha nods her head a few times in understanding. They’ve played a variation of this game before. Crime and punishment. Task and penalty. He puts her careful repositioning to waste by switching implements without warning. What he brings down across her back now is a heavy flogger. The impact is nothing like the thin quirt, and its velocity shoves her forward with a grunt of unexpected impact.

Clint doesn’t let that stop him, getting into a swinging rhythm that alternates which shoulder she takes the brunt of the attack on. These will bruise quickly, and her skin marks into a red blush as she folds over her own legs, hands clenches tightly where they’re tied. She doesn’t make a sound after that first noise of surprise.

“Back up,” he orders. She’s taking slow steady breaths – it’s all about control – when he replaces the rod on her neck before changing back to the original quirt.

He lays down a few experimental strikes with it, but even over the hurt from the flogger she takes it in stillness. She hadn’t been lying about getting its weight. She’s acclimatized now, and is unlikely to move again without help.

“Tell me your timeline for our mission,” he orders.

 “The one we just finished?” she confirms.

“The one we just finished.”

She  rattles it off. Flawlessly. Timestamps and names and backup plans and emergency contacts. Extraction point. Backup extraction plans. She even finishes it off with her own plan, had everything gone to hell enough that she’d needed to make her own way home. Clint whips her a few times at random intervals, but it doesn’t throw her off unduly.

“Perfect as always,” he praises, giving her a break while he shakes out his arm and rolls his shoulder.

“Now,” he continues. “Tell me _my_ timeline.”

She hesitates. This is her first clue to what this is about, and she’d never been one to overlook a clue. Eventually, she begins. She speak slowly, being purposefully vague.

“Nice try,” he quips, and whips her again. This one is lower down, on skin he couldn’t reach with the flogger for fear of hitting her hands. He begins an easy one-two, painting her with lines in mockery of rib bones stretching out from her spine around her body. The quirt is moving fast enough now, with enough force, that they can both hear it moving through the air. _Whhhip-whhhip. Whhhip-whhhip. Whhhip-whhhip._

“What was I doing at 1745?”

She sighs heavily, risking unsettling the rod just to communicate her feelings about the line of conversation, but she answers the question.

“You were at the bar with Eun Ha.”

_Whhhip._

“What was I drinking?”

“Long Island. Because your cover doesn’t know more than five drink names.”

_Whhhip._

“How long did I stay there?”

“In total you were there approximately ninety minutes. If you’re counting from 1745, you were only there another ten or so.”

“Be more specific.”

Another sigh, and the rod shifts slightly. She cants her shoulders to the side to accommodate it.

“You were there from 1622 to 1755. You had three drinks and finished none of them. You made our target somewhere between 1740 and 1745, but I’m not sure when exactly because your tells are getting more subtle.”

 _Whhhip whhhip whhhip_ and the bar shifts, slides, and falls.

They both hold their tongues through the change of implements and the round of heavy strikes with the flogger. Bruises are blooming between the red welting marks on her skin, and she can’t help the air getting knocked out of her. For all the high tensile muscle wrapping her body, the weight of the whip wins against her own.

“Back up,” he orders. There are no more soft touches or kisses. This stopped being about comfort the moment Natasha realized what it was for. He replaces the metal rod and goes back to the quirt.

“Focus,” he says, and whips her hard. Puts his entire body twisting into it, and that’s the first one that breaks skin. It’s just a small split, right where the tip of the quirt had struck, but a drop of blood wells and drips. He fights the urge to wipe it away with his fingers and whips her again instead.

“Where did I go at 1755?”

“You went – _ung_ – to make the second lift. Got your hands on the weapon. Didn’t get caught.”

“What about the video camera?”

“Didn’t even get caught on the camera. Used a column to block yourself.”

“Yeah? Was that in my briefing? To use the column? I don’t remember it being that specific, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I didn’t think of that on my own. Maybe it was there in the orders and that’s how you knew I used the column. Because that makes a hell of a lot more sense than the idea that you were watching me while I did my own damn job.” _Whhhip._ “Than that you can’t keep your eyes on your own work.” _Whhhip._ “That we are years into this team and you still don’t trust me not to fuck it all up.” _Whhhip._ “That you can’t focus on your own tasks.”

The rod falls.

“I just put that back there,” he murmurs, and she hisses through her teeth at the pseudo-humor.

Lather rinse and repeat. They step through the flogger and the rod and the quirt in cyclical animosity.

“Focus on _yourself_!”

“I can’t!” she snaps back suddenly. She jerks her head and shoulder, sending the rod flying several feet. It clangs dully and rolls a few more feet.

Clint takes a handful of her hair and jerks her head back and blindfold down to force her to look up at him. Look him in the eye.

“I refuse,” he says. Clearly. Enunciates each word. “I refuse to be the reason you get yourself killed in the field one day. We aren’t always up against morons who can’t remember their own aliases. Sometimes they’re dangerous. And one day, one of them is going to notice the way you track me. The way you keep up with everything I do and say. You’re going to blow your cover, and they’re going to shoot you in the head, and I refuse for that to be on me. For it to be because I can’t keep up with you.”

He lets go and steps back out of her line of sight. He’s panting heavily, as though he were the one taking the whip.

“You _can_ keep up,” she says. “You keep up just fine. You think they’d put us on a team and give us such free reign if were weren’t both flawless?”

Clint doesn’t answer, just leans his back against the far wall. The concrete is cold against his sweating naked skin, but he forces himself to be still like Natasha.

“You can’t keep watching me. You can’t keep turning yourself into my backup.”

“I’m not watching you because you’re incompetent,” she shouts loudly. “I’m watching you because you’re reckless. You’re reckless as shit, and _I’m_ the one who can’t keep up. You throw yourself into thin air and dark waters and jump out in front of bullets to save men you think deserve to be saved, and I can’t keep up! I never see it coming if I’m not already on edge. _Waiting._ ”

Clint considers. Takes deep breaths and watches her while he chews on the words. The accusations. He’s heard most of them before – in some form or another – but for the first time the consequences are tripping him up.

“You’re holding yourself hostage?” he asks carefully.

She laughs. It’s low and dry, but not bitter.

“I guess I am,” she answers. “Not intentionally. That wasn’t the plan. It just makes sense to put up your life when the item on the auction block is something more valuable to you.”

He pushes himself off the wall and slowly steps across the room to where the rod had rolled to a stop. He picks it up and returns it to her neck. He kneels down and kisses the bloody spot on her back.

“Focus on yourself,” he says. “On your task.”

“I’ll try,” she answers. “If you stop hurting me.”

He puts down the quirt, even though that’s not what she’s talking about.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll try. For you, I’ll try.”


End file.
